


Rop Frå Røynda, Mælt Frå Minne - Call from reality, Spoken from the Memory

by steelneena



Series: Widomauk Week 2k19: With A Twist [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: AU, M/M, Widomauk Week, Widomauk Week 2019, in canon setting, this one is really weird too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 05:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19166638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/pseuds/steelneena
Summary: Prompt: Day 8, Flowers





	Rop Frå Røynda, Mælt Frå Minne - Call from reality, Spoken from the Memory

**Author's Note:**

> The last one! I didn't do the others because I was a busy bee with school ending. Lots of grading to do, unfortunately. 
> 
> Song for inspiration, also from which the title was taken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ7buTUa4Ds

Caleb works hard. He works hard every day to keep his place in the village. It’s backbreaking, and hand roughening, but he’s learned that the best way to survive in this world is through hard work. His parents instilled it into him when he was a child, so, so long ago in Blumenthaal, where every family did their best to contribute, so they could pay the king’s tax. Clearly – viciously clearly – he could recall when the neighbour’s child was taken away as collateral for the unpaid dues on their farm, how he had clung to his Mutti’s legs, his father’s hand gripping strong into the fabric of his shirt as they watched from the window as the child was dragged away, kicking and screaming, the father (for the mother had died of a fever a few years past) alone, fallen to his knees weeping pitifully.

And so Caleb had worked extra hard, his parents hadn’t had to tell him that what had happened to Julian would easily happen to him should they fall behind.

But that was long, long ago, and now, Caleb works himself to the bone. The village is high in the Frozen wastes. They’re so far from civilization that even Icehaven is days and days ride away. Not that Caleb has ever come close to owning a horse a day in his life, much less being able to rent one. His gloves are threadbare and his beard is thick, and ice cling to both. He tugs his scarf back up over his red, numb nose and continues to pick away at the frozen over pile of snow that currently encapsulates the firewood.

He’s never been exactly strong, despite how hard he works. His hands have always been mangled and coarse, despite the fact that they’re made for holding quills and leafing through books. When he first arrived in the village, picking away at the ice for more than ten minutes was enough to have him breaking out in a sweat, even for as cold as the weather was year round.

But he was different from the boy he’d been then: fresh-faced, cheeks never scoured by the harsh, biting winds.

A log comes free and he pauses to fix his hood over his shaggy locks. Taking a moment, he closes his eyes, thinking back to the last summer he’d spent in Blumenthaal, how the fields had been covered over completely with wildflowers in every shade of every colour imaginable. How he and Astrid and Wulf had woven their flowercrowns for the summer festival together, with matching blooms. How it was supposed to symbolize something everlasting, renewing and reviving.

Caleb opens his eyes. Even in the subtle blues and greens of dusk, the world is stark white.

No flowers here. Never flowers here.

He adds the log to his pile, straps it up and slips the straps over his aching shoulders, slings the pick in his belt, and begins the walk back to the village proper. From the tundra, which is flat and open, it is easy to see the little town, its lights glowing eerily in the growing dark. It’s almost pitch black, save the light of the moon, by the time he gets to the hall. The guards haul the doors open for him when he nears and he can feel the rippling wave of heat roll out from the room, can see the vibrant flame in the brazier at the center.

The process doesn’t take long. Caleb passes off his load and is handed a clay jug of mead and a warm loaf of bread, which he quickly wraps up in the only clean cloth he owns, which he keeps in a little pouch at his belt. And then, he turns away from the light of the hearth and heads back out into the blistering cold.

In the moonlight, it is easy to find his hut. It stands away from the others, considering that it is one of the newer ones, which makes it colder by nature.

Caleb tries to pretend he doesn’t mind, but the only person there is to pretend for is himself.

The hut is a two room ordeal, though the second room is little more than an attached cellar. His bedroom and the kitchen are all in one, for that is where the fireplace is, and so, where he must be. When he sits down at the table, he draws forth the new bread, breaking it in half and putting away the other piece for another time. He has a little dried meat which he keeps in the cupboard, and one, single, precious orange.

He’s been saving it.

Soon. He’ll have to eat it soon. He can feel his gut that he’ll have to, just to stay healthy, but it’s the most valuable thing he owns, won at a steep price.

_ Blood on the floor, dark and congealing already, even though fresh. It’s so cold that the viscous fluid is actually steaming. Bile lodges in his throat—  _

Caleb sighs and closes the cupboard.

One more day.

Lighting his fireplace first with a burst of magic, Caleb discards his wet outer things and robes himself in the only truly warm garment he owns, a woolen knit sweater, and climbs beneath the warmth of his patchwork pelt blanket. The fire roars for a while, but he won’t get new wood until the next day, and all too soon, the fire goes out, leaving him to shiver.

Not for the first time, Caleb wonders why he condemns himself to such a place.

It doesn’t take long to remind himself.

When finally, in the early hours of dawn, his toes grow numb enough to allow him sleep, he dreams of flowering fields and laughter and warmth.

In the morning, when he wakes, he blinks the dim light away and rolls to the side, intending to sit up, but instead is greeted with such a sight that he has to blink again, roll away and then back, rubbing his eyes to clear them before he believes what he sees.

Beside his pillow lays a single impossible sunflower.

Beautiful, bright, perfect, and impossible.

Impossible.

Caleb lifts the sunflower delicately, afraid it will vanish at his touch, but it’s solid and real in his hand. The stem even prickles his fingers from the tiny little hairs.

His mind whirling, Caleb contemplates the impossible flower. In seconds, he’s past the point of wondering how it got there, and instead begins to frantically consider how to keep such a precious thing alive in such an unforgiving environment, only to come to the conclusion that such a feat is impossible.

Nearly a minute passes before he realizes that he’s been crying. Silent, shoulders heaving, Caleb holds the flower in his hands like the corpse of a small, dead creature, and weeps.

When the sun is finally peeking through the frosted glass of his tiny window, Caleb knows he can wait no longer and stands up, reluctantly laying the flower on his pillow so that he can change back into his working clothes.

Before he leaves, his gear packed, and himself bundled up for the day, he takes one last look at the flower on his pillow before sighing heavily and leaving.

The whole day long, he pointedly tries – and fails – not to think about the flower.

For a time, he considers that it was all an elaborate dream, and that he’s really actually just died and this is his own personal hell, but another part of him, the rational part, knows that it’s not. That his greatest curse is to remain alive, and suffer for the life that he’d lead.

He toils the day long, and only ten times does he find his mind wandering back to how the flower got there. No answer that comes to him is sufficient, even plausible.

The day runs routine. He performs his allotted chores and at the end of the night, cold and numb, he receives his mead and his bread and he returns in the darkness to him little hut.

The sunflower lies on his pillow shriveled and dead.

Somehow, he manages to keep himself from tears again as he takes a piece of string and ties it to the stem before hanging the pitiful flower from a nail over his bed where the previous tenant had once hung something. Perhaps a deer skull, perhaps a painting, or a bow.

When he is gone, and someone else inhabits this place, it will have been flowers that hung there, but Caleb rests easy in the knowledge that what he had placed there would not be so easily guessed, much less believed.

In the morning, Caleb wakes on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He can feel his heart palpitating in his chest, more wild and alive than it has in years. If he turns his head, will there be a sunflower there? Any flower at all?

If he looks above his headboard, will the brittle dried skeleton still be hanging there?

He tilts his head back.

Still there.

Cautiously, he rolls and find himself face to face with a sprig of white gardenia blossoms, and suddenly, the scent of it is so overpowering in the small space that Caleb nearly reels back before settling to trace a gentle finger over the tiny, delicate petals.

The whole day long, Caleb is mad with excitement as he wracks his memories for answers, before turning to planning.

There is only one thing for it, after all, and that is to find out how the flowers were getting there. He’s managed to overthink every possible avenue, every conceivable idea, and one of them  _ must _ be correct. Someone in the village, though who and how he doesn’t know. There are no druids here, at least none that he knows of, and he keeps to himself. Isolation is his due, and he knows it, so he rules it out. Eventually, he even imagines some rogue creature from the feywild, though he can’t come up with a good  _ reason _ as to why the flowers are being left for him, but then, he considers, it might not  _ just _ be him at all. Against all reason, he finds that the consideration stings.

It slows down his work, but only a little. He’s too excited, too high on the plan, to see, to discover. Too intrigued by the new and the different that’s been interjects into his routine. And for a moment, by the attention. He knows he doesn’t deserve it, but he can’t help clinging to it all the same, like a jealous lover.

When he asks later, in the hall as he delivers his load in exchange for his rations, about flowers, everyone looks at him like he’s lost it. Not one face flickers curiously, like they have something to hide. Not one.

The flowers, it seems, are for him alone, or at least, they are not for those who control the workings of the little village.

He returns to his hut, and eats and drinks like usual, and hangs the dried gardenia sprig with the sunflower. But from there, his routine changes. He knows that he will hate himself for it in the morning, when he has to get up and begin the morning’s chores, but Caleb can’t help himself. A small part of him, the part that sounds like his parents, reminds him of the stories of his youth, how it is better to not know where such gifts come from, that the creatures that leave them often do not have the best intentions, or that he might break their bond by seeking to gaze upon them, but something compels him to it, to pull on his wool sweater and his coat over it and hat and gloves, grab his tin of salt, and settle his bed as though he is still sleeping in it before huddling down beneath the table, where the heat from the fireplace collects, but where he won’t be easily seen.

And there, Caleb waits.

By his count, several hours pass before he hears a noise.

He’s not grown tired, his blood pumping full of adrenaline, heart pounding in his ears. The low, red glowing embers crackle with the remnants of flames but there is a creak from his cellar, and the door slowly, slowly swings open and a shadowy figure emerges.

When the door shuts part of the way, the embers illuminate a svelte figure. It takes careful, light steps across the old floorboards over to his bed, and, with a soft, unintelligible whisper and a silver of beautiful red misting magic a small tear opened in the world and the figure reaches into the pocket and pluck from it a single sprig of sweetpea, placing it beside the pillow. The scent wafts under the table and that, together with the silhouette, confirms it.

Careful, he snakes out from beneath the table – he moved the chair before he went beneath to make it relatively easy – and then, when the figure’s back is turned, he stands to his full height, opens the tin of salt as quietly as he can and tosses it to the ground before the figure.

With a whirl, the figure turns and Caleb finds himself face to face with the most beautiful person he’s ever seen.

Wide, glowing red eyes are stuck on him like a deer caught in a hunter’s sights. There’s the barest twitch to the stranger’s muscles, like he might run at any moment, but he makes no move.

At the least, Caleb expected that the stranger would immediately bend down to pick up the salt. But the curling rams horns and purple skin and the twitching tail – so much like a cat’s – seem to prove him wrong.

The stranger blinks.

“Why are you leaving the flowers?” Caleb asks bluntly, more harshly than he meant to.

The stranger, taken aback, opens his mouth as if to speak, breath shifting his chest as he draws back from Caleb, and for the first time, he notices that the stranger is not dressed for the weather at all. And shivering. The shirt, loose and flowing, is open, revealing the hard flat planes of a muscled chest, covered in all manner of inked designs, and tight pants cling to his legs, though hidden mostly by tall leather boots. The leather doesn’t creak when the stranger moves, so Caleb knows that it’s supple, likely well-worn doe hide.

“I-”

The voice is lower than Caleb anticipated, but from the single syllable, he can tell little else.

“What are you doing in my root cellar? How did you get there? How did you get here? Who are you?” Caleb advances, step for step, closer and the stranger, once so seeming startled, rolls his shoulders back and stands his ground until Caleb is standing less than an arms-length away. Heat spills off the stranger’s body, but this close, Caleb can see the goosebumps raised over the beautiful lilac of their skin.

“My name is Mollymauk Tealeaf,” the lilting voice fairly caresses Caleb’s ears and it’s all he can do to keep himself from shivering. “I live in your root cellar. I got there by accident. I got  _ here _ by accident. I bring you the flowers because you seemed sad, and I like you.”

Caleb, too stunned to speak, does nothing.

“You’re beautiful by the firelight.” Mollymauk says, off hand, and Caleb, though flushing furiously through his confusion, sees Mollymauk’s fingers twitch, but they don’t move further than that. “I’m lonely and frightened. And you seemed lonely and frightened, too. I wanted you not to be unhappy anymore.”

“How… how long have you been there? You are shivering! You need, you need blankets. Are you hungry? You haven’t eaten any of my food, you must be sta—” 

“I am cold, but I don’t need any food,” Mollymauk reassures him. After a long, awkward pause, Mollymauk looks down to the ground before him which is strewn with salt. “Why did you toss salt at me?” 

“I thought… you might be, ah, some manner of fae creature. I have heard stories, you know, that they have to count the granules before they can leave…”

The silence picks right back up where it left off.

“I’m not fae. I’m a tiefling.”

“Ja, I can see that.” There’s not a single tiefling in the whole town. A few half elves, sure, but the rest are all human. Somethings aren’t limited to Rexxentrum’s city walls. Cultural homogeneity is one of them, at least here in the bitter, endless wintry north. Finally, some rational thought returns to Caleb and he immediately races to the bed, pulling off the blanket and throwing it about Mollymauk’s shoulders. “You said, ah, you said you were cold,” he stammers, scratching at his head.

“Thank you.”

Mollymauk’s eyes follow him through the room. Aimlessly, Caleb sets the salt box down on the table, unsure what to do with himself. For a while, there is only the crackling of the embers and then, the words slip from his lips without his permission.

“How did you know I missed the flowers so much?”

“I…didn’t?” Mollymauk cocks his head, searching Caleb’s face. “Flowers make my friend happy, I assumed they would make you happy, too. In so desolate a place, how could they not?”

“I…thank you. They did. Make me happy. How... how long have you been living in my root cellar?”

Mollymauk takes a lip beneath his very sharp canine and for a moment, Caleb thinks he might pierce the tender flesh, but nothing happens. “A week? I think. I can’t really remember. All the days are sort of the same.”

“And before that?”

“Well,” Mollymauk says, shifting on his feet, his tail swishing through the air. “I’ve been hiding since I got here. I… overheard some people talking, and I didn’t think they’d be any too welcoming to me, but I saw that you kept to yourself and then I heard them saying things about you and I didn’t particularly care for it. If they weren’t nice, and didn’t like you, I figured you couldn’t be too terrible?”

Caleb scoffs at that and sits, finally weakened by the strangeness and lateness of the night, on the bed. “I am not a good person.”

“Are you really?”

“Yes. Whatever you may think, I am not—” 

“Because the first thing you did was throw salt at someone invading your home because of a children’s tale; I think you’re not too terrible at all.”

“Mollymauk—” 

“It’s Molly,” Molly says sharply. “Molly to my friends. Are you are my friend now. You haven’t tried to kill me. You gave me your blanket. That makes you my friend.”

Caleb finds himself too stunned for words for the second time that night. And when Molly sits next to him, he remains silent. And when Molly reaches a hand for his, he can’t move, only lets it happen. Molly’s hand over his is as impossibly warm as the flowers are real.

“You said you were cold.” Internally, Caleb berates himself for saying the single stupidest thing that had come into his mind. But Molly is leaning in close to him, and his eyes are like the most perfect of polished garnets and— 

“I’m not now.”

“I’m glad.”

It is all too ludicrous, Caleb thinks as he feels the blush spread hot across his cheeks. Someone thinking he’s nice. Someone wanting to do something nice for him.

Someone wanting to be his friend.

From out of nowhere, mysterious and alluring, and agonizingly kind.

“What will you do about the salt?” Molly asks abruptly, and Caleb, for the life of him, begin to laugh. It starts at his toes and works its way up until the laughing is gone and all that remains are dry sobs and the startled, concerned look on Mollymauk’s face.

“Caleb? Caleb, are you alr-what’s wrong?”

“You want to be my friend!” he blurts through his heaving breaths. “You don’t know me, you don’t know anything, just because I have not attacked you, just because others do not say kind things – I don’t suppose you were able to ask, ja? For if you could have, you would find that I am not kind. I am not good. And you should not want to be my friend.”

“Too bad,” Molly replies firmly, squeezing Caleb’s hand, and when had he forgotten that? That Molly was holding his hand? He very, very pointledly does not look at his visitor, instead staring at the glow of the fireplace “I’ve been here a week. I’m miserable. You choose to be here, don’t you? I think being in this place makes you feel terrible about yourself, too. You’re punishing yourself. I don’t care what it’s for. You’re not needlessly cruel to anyone. Except yourself, that is.”

There is such an air of finality to his words that Caleb hesitates to reply, and a little voice in his brain annoyingly informs him that it’s starting to become a trend.

“I want to leave this place and I know that unless you help me, the people here will probably kill me, won’t they? You know I’m right, don’t you?”

_ Devilspawn _ .

Caleb can hear them already.

“So leave. And if you need it to be for me, I’m happy to be an excuse.”

He knows what Molly wants him to do makes sense. He also knows that it’s a ploy. But he doesn’t care. Molly’s hand is warm in his, and soft, and the scent of flowers fills the cabin, and Caleb closes his eyes, and imagines the field in Blumenthaal, and thinks about the stolen orange in his cupboard and the secret guest sitting on his bed. Caleb turns to look at Molly, dead on.

“You are right. I will help you. I have been punishing myself. Maybe, instead, it is time to do something good to make up for…for…the things I have done.”

It’s an impulse. Quick and impossibly potent.

Caleb leans in to kisses Molly on the cheek, soft and gentle, like a falling snowflake, but at the last moment, Molly turns his head and captures Caleb’s lips with his own. It’s still tender, but unexpected, and Caleb startles for a moment before letting the kiss run its course. When they part, Mollymauk is watching him from hooded eyes.

“Thank you, Mister Caleb,” he says, quietly, carefully.

On the bed, the flowers still lay perfect and beautiful.

Caleb stands, letting Molly’s hand fall from his own and goes to the cupboard, taking out the orange.

“Here. Please.” He holds it out. “Take this.” He can’t eat it. Won’t.

Molly reaches out and takes it, sharp nails biting into the fruit’s tender peel. Though Molly eyes him curiously, he doesn’t ask questions.

“I will need to steal a horse. You need to eat. There isn’t much to pack, but I promise you, I will get you back to wherever it is you came from, ja?”

“I believe you.”

And for some miraculous reason, Caleb knows that he means it.

 


End file.
